Michael Chabon - Telegraph Avenue

“Now, that is truly some bullshit,” Luther told Archy. “Chan, you knew this thing with Popcorn was going to come back on you someday. From the day you settled your ass down, followed in the footsteps, started pumping that formaldehyde, you been living in dread it would come out.” He turned to Archy. “I got evidence, son. DNA.” It was his turn to lean back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head, flapping the rooster wings of his elbows. “Shit lasts a million years. Put it under a microscope, clone yourself a damn triceratops. One day, check it out, some Jurassic Park motherfucker’s going to come along, clone Chan Flowers for a prehistoric Oakland ride, Chan be standing there when Laura Dern goes by in her Jeep. Shit, Chan, I bet I can even lead them to the gun! That Mossberg’s probably still there in the woods, tangled up in some weeds and shit.”

“You’re in the weeds right now,” Flowers said. “Way out in the weeds, Luther.”

“What do you have?” Archy said.

“A glove,” Luther said. “Chan was wearing it when he did Popcorn Hughes, has Popcorn’s blood DNA all over it.”

“A glove,” said Flowers.

“You remember, it was your brother’s, Marcel’s. Little purple glove from the costume he was wearing—”

“A glove!” Flowers enjoyed or pretended to enjoy the idea that an accessory, a minor item of haberdashery, could ever inspire the kind of anxiety that Luther had described. “A glove, been in some crackhead’s back pocket thirty-one years? Even if it turned out to be real,” wanting Archy to come in with him on scorning this one, “I mean, even if the blood on this glove turned out to be mine, or Popcorn Hughes’, or Jimmy Hoffa’s, what does that prove?”

Here it came, bright and true as a streaming banner: the smile of Cleon Strutter, showing his hand.

“Just give me a hundred thousand dollars,” Luther said, “we never need to answer that question.”

“Luther, for real?” Archy said. “Blackmail?”

Tossing the word across to his father like a grappling hook, feeling one small barb catch hold. Luther looked down at his feet in their slippers, then up at Archy. Nodding. Good with it. “If you want to call it that,” he said.

“It’s true, you really clean and sober?”

“Thirteen months, one week, and five days,” Luther said.

“For, like, honestly, the first time in, since, what, the late eighties?”

Luther allowed that was probably accurate.

“So this is the real you, then. That right? Luther Stallings, clean and sober: a scumbag blackmailer.”

The flag of Luther’s smile failed, then caught a fresh breeze and streamed freely.

“I’m just trying to make a movie, son. Revive my fortunes. Maybe that seems like an impracticable plan to all y’all cynical motherfuckers, don’t have dreams of your own. I guess I’m sentimental. Foolish. I just thought maybe my oldest, longest friend might want to help me out.”

“Help you again ,” Flowers corrected him. “Archy, he’s been trying to blackmail me on this alleged murder for years . It is not a recent phenomenon linked to sobriety.”

Archy picked up that bit about alleged murder and worked it like a smooth stone in the palm. He went back over the conversation so far, trying to remember if Flowers had admitted to or acknowledged any wrongdoing at all. He didn’t think so.

“Help me again ,” Luther conceded. “On a grander scale. Basically,” he told Archy, “what happened, see, I had kept the glove the night of the killing. I don’t know why. Just held on to it like a souvenir of, you know, wild times. A few years down the road, when I got deep into the deepest badness of my life, and I’m not proud of that, I know I let you down, everyone down, but, uh…” Losing the thread, picking it up again. “I went looking for the glove. Thinking it might be, like they say, fungible. But it seemed like I had lost it somewheres, moving around all the time, in and out of jail and whatnot. Then I hooked up with Valletta again. Right after I got out of rehab. Turned out she had the thing all along.”

“So, Mr. Councilman,” Archy said. “Do you want this glove Luther has?”

Chan Flowers spoke slowly, through his teeth, as if it killed him to have to admit it. “I might,” he said.

“And let’s say, for whatever reason, Luther doesn’t give it to you, what are you going to do?”

The answer to this question was even slower in arriving, but when it did arrive, it appeared to cause him little pain. “I have more to lose than Luther does,” Flowers said.

“Oh, I see,” Archy said. “Going with cryptic but scary. And what about me, now that I know about the glove, too? Do you have more to lose than I do?”

“You aren’t ever going to blackmail me, Archy. I know that. It’s not in your nature. You must have got your mom’s strength of character.”

“Let’s don’t bring her into this, all right? I’m glad she never lived to see this sorry day.” He dared his father to challenge this assertion, and Luther quietly let it go by. “So, then, what?” Archy said. “If I promise not to say anything, then you just going to kill Luther over this but not me?”

“I deal in dead people every day of the year,” Flowers said. “Remember that. And I am looking to find a little security in these uncertain times. Whatever form that security might take.”

Archy wondered where the glove was right now. Luther must have it salted away someplace, stashed with some lowlife, some ex-cellie of his. Taped inside a toilet tank, inside a Ziploc bag. The thing to do, he thought, just get hold of it somehow. Take it to the police, let them decide the outcome. It might lead nowhere, point to nothing, incriminate no one. Or it might be the end of Councilman Flowers and, quite possibly, the Dogpile plan.

“If I walk out of here right now,” Archy said to Flowers, “leave this asshole to your ministrations—and I think we are all familiar with the quality of the work y’all do here—you say, you are going to trust me on this.”

“I do trust you, Archy. I respect you, and I know you would never disrespect me. You walk out of here, I will personally guarantee to make sure you and that little family you got on the way are well taken care of as long as I’m around. You just go with an easy mind. Let me and Luther settle this thing out.”

“So, for instance,” Archy said, “how about, would you back me up at Brokeland? Because, I mean, once our friend G Bad doesn’t have anything to hold over your head anymore… assuming you, uh, obtain this famous glove. In return for me keeping quiet.” As he said this, a rotor began to whirl in the Leslie cabinet of his chest. “Maybe you could, say, withdraw your support for the Dogpile Thang. Come back over onto the side of Nat and me? Because, you know, in our own small and modest way, we’re good for the community, too.”

“I will do better than that,” Flowers said. “I will truly back you. As a silent partner. Pay down your debt for you. Get your creditors to step off, whatever it takes.”

“I have to say, that sounds very attractive.”

“Archy,” Luther said. “Son, come on.”

“And all I got to do, let me get this straight, is walk out of here. Leave you and him to, uh, was it, ‘settle this out’?”

“That’s all,” Flowers said. “Of course, you have to remember, if it ever turns out to be the case the police do take an interest in this old unsolved crime? You might wind up being charged as an accessory after the fact.”

Archy stood up, nodding, as if all this struck him as a reasonable, even enviable, proposal. Then he reached down and smacked his father hard on the back of the head, as if swatting a particularly vicious and slow-moving horsefly that had settled there. “Give him the motherfucking glove, Luther,” he said. “And then get the fuck out of here. I can’t stand the sight or smell of either of you blackmailing, lying, murdering old motherfuckers. Give Mr. Flowers the glove before I take it off you and give it to the police myself.”